If you go to Yemen where I was, and you see the unexploded cluster bombs, and you have the list and photographic evidence, as I do, of women and children that represented the vast majority of deaths in the first strike that Obama authorized on Yemen, those people were murdered by President Obama, on his orders, because there was believed to be someone from Al Qaeda in that area.
Jeremy Scahill, national security reporter for The Nation • Leveling a dire condemnation against President Obama, on the topic of U.S. drone strikes. Scahill was speaking on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes” (clearly a show accustomed to recent controversy), and as one could expect his remarks have drawn wide criticism. This is an issue Scahill is very close to — he’s reported from Yemen before, and claims one strike he investigated killed some 35 people, 14 of them children. Redstate.com founder Joshua Treviño pushed back, suggesting he was saying something ‘no reasonable person’ would. We think there’s a very worthy conversation to be had about the moral ramifications of this new sort of warfare, we just hope it doesn’t become too intense at expense of the dialogue. source (via • follow)

(via randomactsofchaos)

Source: shortformblog

socialuprooting: America’s drone sickness This headline and first paragraph from today’s Washington Post scoop by Greg Miller speaks volumes about so many things.  There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list. Although the Obama White House has not approved of this request from CIA Director David Petraeus, these so-called “signature strikes” that “allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior” are already robustly used in Pakistan — having been started by George Bush in 2008 and aggressively escalated by Barack Obama. There is much to say on this new report, but in order for me to focus on three discrete points, permit me to highly recommend two superb articles that highlight other vital aspects of this policy: (1) this article from my Salon colleague Jefferson Morley this morning on why this form of drone-targeting is pure American Terrorism, and (2) this essay from Chris Floyd about a recently published Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings on Obama’s love of drones and secret wars and how the military’s slang for drone victims — “bug splat” — reflects the sociopathic mindset that drive them. Initially, it’s critical to note how removed all of these questions are from democratic debate or accountability, thanks to the Obama administration’s insistence that even the basic question of whether the CIA has a drone program is too secret to permit it to publicly acknowledge, even though everyone knows it exists — especially in the countries where it routinely kills people. Recall that Obama officials refused to tell the ACLU, in response to a FOIA request, whether any documents relating to a CIA drone program even exist because even that is too much of a secret to address, and when the ACLU then sued the Obama administration — seeking the most basic information about why the Obama administration thinks it has the power to kill people this way and how it decides who will die — the Obama DOJ again insisted in court that it cannot even acknowledge that such a program exists, let alone provide any basic disclosure or transparency about it. So here we have this incredibly consequential policy adopted in total secrecy by the Obama administration, one that empowers the President to secretly target people, including American citizens, for instant, due-process-free death. They have placed the policy beyond the rule of law — by insisting that it’s too secret for courts to examine — and shielded it completely from democratic debate. The only time we are permitted even to hear about it is when the President, his aides and loyalists politically exploit the corpses they create by strutting around with chest-beating, tough-guy boasting about how Strong it shows Obama to be (because, really, what is more courageous, more embodying of the noble American warrior spirit, than killing people by remote-controlled video game while the killers are ensconced in secure bunkers in the U.S.?). And the only time we are permitted glimpses of the debate over these policies is when someone decides to leak it anonymously to reporters like Greg Miller. So here’s a policy — CIA drone strikes — which anonymous administration officials are defending yet again on the front page of The Washington Post at the very same time the Obama DOJ tells courts that it cannot explain itself in a judicial proceeding because it cannot even safely confirm that such a program exists.  Last week, the Obama administration indicted its 7th whistleblower on charges of espionage — more than double the number of such cases under all prior Presidents combined — and it continues to insist that its CIA drone program is too secret even to acknowledge for purposes of court cases or public debate, even as it boasts of that same program on the front pages of newspapers. That’s apparently what Clinton means when she trumpets the “global ethos of accountability and transparency.” Secondly, one can never emphasize enough how the U.S., through the policies undertaken in the name of the Terorrist Threat, is principally responsible for sustaining and continuously increasing that threat. In February, Jeremy Schaill returned from Yemen and documented how U.S. drone attacks that are the primary source of Al Qaeda’s strength in that country. In March, David Rohde — the former New York Times reporter who was kidnapped and held in Pakistan by the Taliban for seven months — documented how Obama’s “signature strikes” in Pakistan are also “backfiring”: From Pakistan to Yemen to post-American Iraq, drones often spark deep resentment where they operate. When they do attack, they kill as brutally as any weapon of war. The administration’s practice of classifying the strikes as secret only exacerbates local anger and suspicion. Under Obama, drone strikes have become too frequent, too unilateral, and too much associated with the heavy-handed use of American power. Rohde also noted: “after promising to make counterterrorism operations more transparent and rein in executive power, Obama has arguably done the opposite, maintaining secrecy and expanding presidential authority.” Last night, in response to this Post article, Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen wrote: “At some point – as the bombs continues to fall – people are going to come to the conclusion that Yemen is under western military attack” and “signature strikes in Yemen could easily expand the war well beyond one the US could ever kill its way out of.” He observed that “signature strikes” are likely to kill far more civilians since “in Yemen just because it has a beard, carries a gun, and talks about Islamic law doesn’t mean its al-Qaeda” and then asked: “If US has been carrying out strikes in Yemen since Dec. 2009 then why does AQAP keep getting stronger?” In late 2009, an Obama-approved attack with Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs killed dozens of innocent Yemenis, including 21 children. In May, 2010, a U.S. drone attack killed a popular Deputy Governor of a Yemeni province. In October of last year, two weeks after Obama successfully ordered the death of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. drone strike killed his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman (today’s Post article asserted, seemingly without any basis, that that killing was “inadvertent,” even though the alleged target was apparently nowhere near the scene). It’s not hard to imagine what ordinary Yemenis think of the U.S., and whether they’d be more sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s message after all of this. So here we have — yet again — the U.S. doing more than anyone else could to increase the threat of Terrorism with the very policies it claims are necessary to combat Terrorism. It’s impossible to know whether that outcome is a feature or a bug for U.S. policy makers, but what is certain is that the threat that continues to fuel impenetrable American secrecy, massive erosions of civil liberties, the proliferation of the Surveillance State, and the endless expansion of endless war and militarism, is the very same threat which the American National Security State — as it well knows — is primarily responsible for sustaining with its actions.
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socialuprooting:

America’s drone sickness

This headline and first paragraph from today’s Washington Post scoop by Greg Miller speaks volumes about so many things. 

There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list. Although the Obama White House has not approved of this request from CIA Director David Petraeus, these so-called “signature strikes” that “allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior” are already robustly used in Pakistan — having been started by George Bush in 2008 and aggressively escalated by Barack Obama. There is much to say on this new report, but in order for me to focus on three discrete points, permit me to highly recommend two superb articles that highlight other vital aspects of this policy: (1) this article from my Salon colleague Jefferson Morley this morning on why this form of drone-targeting is pure American Terrorism, and (2) this essay from Chris Floyd about a recently published Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings on Obama’s love of drones and secret wars and how the military’s slang for drone victims — “bug splat” — reflects the sociopathic mindset that drive them.

Initially, it’s critical to note how removed all of these questions are from democratic debate or accountability, thanks to the Obama administration’s insistence that even the basic question of whether the CIA has a drone program is too secret to permit it to publicly acknowledge, even though everyone knows it exists — especially in the countries where it routinely kills people. Recall that Obama officials refused to tell the ACLU, in response to a FOIA request, whether any documents relating to a CIA drone program even exist because even that is too much of a secret to address, and when the ACLU then sued the Obama administration — seeking the most basic information about why the Obama administration thinks it has the power to kill people this way and how it decides who will die — the Obama DOJ again insisted in court that it cannot even acknowledge that such a program exists, let alone provide any basic disclosure or transparency about it.

So here we have this incredibly consequential policy adopted in total secrecy by the Obama administration, one that empowers the President to secretly target people, including American citizens, for instant, due-process-free death. They have placed the policy beyond the rule of law — by insisting that it’s too secret for courts to examine — and shielded it completely from democratic debate. The only time we are permitted even to hear about it is when the President, his aides and loyalists politically exploit the corpses they create by strutting around with chest-beating, tough-guy boasting about how Strong it shows Obama to be (because, really, what is more courageous, more embodying of the noble American warrior spirit, than killing people by remote-controlled video game while the killers are ensconced in secure bunkers in the U.S.?).

And the only time we are permitted glimpses of the debate over these policies is when someone decides to leak it anonymously to reporters like Greg Miller. So here’s a policy — CIA drone strikes — which anonymous administration officials are defending yet again on the front page of The Washington Post at the very same time the Obama DOJ tells courts that it cannot explain itself in a judicial proceeding because it cannot even safely confirm that such a program exists. 

Last week, the Obama administration indicted its 7th whistleblower on charges of espionage — more than double the number of such cases under all prior Presidents combined — and it continues to insist that its CIA drone program is too secret even to acknowledge for purposes of court cases or public debate, even as it boasts of that same program on the front pages of newspapers. That’s apparently what Clinton means when she trumpets the “global ethos of accountability and transparency.”

Secondly, one can never emphasize enough how the U.S., through the policies undertaken in the name of the Terorrist Threat, is principally responsible for sustaining and continuously increasing that threat. In February, Jeremy Schaill returned from Yemen and documented how U.S. drone attacks that are the primary source of Al Qaeda’s strength in that country. In March, David Rohde — the former New York Times reporter who was kidnapped and held in Pakistan by the Taliban for seven months — documented how Obama’s “signature strikes” in Pakistan are also “backfiring”:

From Pakistan to Yemen to post-American Iraq, drones often spark deep resentment where they operate. When they do attack, they kill as brutally as any weapon of war. The administration’s practice of classifying the strikes as secret only exacerbates local anger and suspicion. Under Obama, drone strikes have become too frequent, too unilateral, and too much associated with the heavy-handed use of American power.

Rohde also noted: “after promising to make counterterrorism operations more transparent and rein in executive power, Obama has arguably done the opposite, maintaining secrecy and expanding presidential authority.” Last night, in response to this Post article, Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen wrote: “At some point – as the bombs continues to fall – people are going to come to the conclusion that Yemen is under western military attack” and “signature strikes in Yemen could easily expand the war well beyond one the US could ever kill its way out of.” He observed that “signature strikes” are likely to kill far more civilians since “in Yemen just because it has a beard, carries a gun, and talks about Islamic law doesn’t mean its al-Qaeda” and then asked: “If US has been carrying out strikes in Yemen since Dec. 2009 then why does AQAP keep getting stronger?”

In late 2009, an Obama-approved attack with Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs killed dozens of innocent Yemenis, including 21 children. In May, 2010, a U.S. drone attack killed a popular Deputy Governor of a Yemeni province. In October of last year, two weeks after Obama successfully ordered the death of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. drone strike killed his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman (today’s Post article asserted, seemingly without any basis, that that killing was “inadvertent,” even though the alleged target was apparently nowhere near the scene). It’s not hard to imagine what ordinary Yemenis think of the U.S., and whether they’d be more sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s message after all of this.

So here we have — yet again — the U.S. doing more than anyone else could to increase the threat of Terrorism with the very policies it claims are necessary to combat Terrorism. It’s impossible to know whether that outcome is a feature or a bug for U.S. policy makers, but what is certain is that the threat that continues to fuel impenetrable American secrecy, massive erosions of civil liberties, the proliferation of the Surveillance State, and the endless expansion of endless war and militarism, is the very same threat which the American National Security State — as it well knows — is primarily responsible for sustaining with its actions.